Clay,
You wrote: "In other words, the trick to writing 'interesting' free verse is to write verse that suggests meter, without actually fulfilling its form--just as the trick to writing interesting metrical verse is to disguise or strain against the metrical paradigm."
Consonance, assonance and alliteration suggest rhyme without actually comsummating same at line end -- and this is considered a primary element of successful free verse -- so, a suggestion of meter would, by analogy (and from Eliot's argument) also seem a primary element.
This may bring out one of the shortcomings of many free verse poetry boards: readers with a simplistic aesthetic are on a nominal equal footing with sophisticated readers.
I have written a number of poems in which I incorporated metrical elements -- e.g. "near" blank verse -- only to have readers slam me with "You should either use meter or not use meter. This halfway stuff doesn't cut it." These same (shall I call them numbskulls?) persons also rail against an occasional rhyme.
So, as far as our discussion of lineation, this would suggest that a line should be "cut" in such as way that the flow of stresses suggests, but does not consummate, an underlying metrical model.
The crucial detail, of course, is that this "underlying metrical model" must lie within the aesthetic purview of the reader, else the tension against this form will be lost.
Fred
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